Do You Want to Build A ___________________?

I personally love the movie Frozen. Even if you hate it, you probably started singing the moment you saw this blog title. It’s one of the most recognizable motifs in recent musical movie history. We just can’t Let It Go.

I work with young’uns for a living. They consist of a typical range of lovers and haters of the movie Frozen. One of the things we do for fun in their lunch room is write polls on the dry erase board. I have learned a lot about their favorite books, music, and quotes this way. I have also learned that the majority of them would NOT eat SPAM Pop-Tarts.

This winter, I had “Do You Want To Build a Snowman?” stuck in my head. I needed desperately to change it up, so I wrote this one-line mad-lib as the poll of the week:

Do you want to build a _______________?

Bless you young’uns, for coming up with the following suggestions:

Do you want to build an ancient empire?

Do you want to build a better mousetrap?

Do you want to build a huge bicep?

Do you want to build an energy-efficient lightbulb?

Do you want to build a cactus?

Do you want to build a Lego Batplane?

Do you want to build a skyscraper?

Do you want to build a Death Star?

Do you want to build a triple-scoop ice cream cone?

Do you want to Build-a-Bear?

One of them wrote a song based on a craft activity we’d been doing:

Do you want to build an airplane

With paper and a straw?

Image courtesy of scottchan at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

I think my favorite answers are the ones that don’t make sense. Because exactly how would you build a cactus? It’s fun to envision.

Image courtesy of foto76 at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

I think you would need thimbles.

I also enjoyed the really long answers that ruin the rhythm. One kid wrote a paragraph. It reminded me of the Broadway musical Wicked, when Galinda rambles to her parents about her “impossible to describe” roommate, Elphaba.

Of course I had to sing everything aloud with the new and improved lyrics. I can’t say it got rid of the earworm (that’s the official word for “a song stuck in your head”). But it certainly made the song refreshing again.

Now that I have gotten this song stuck in your head, please try out the system!

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Sarah E. writes unruly fairy tales. Her 1st book, Waking Beauty, was published in April 2015. She is a leader in the local arts community, including Noble Poets, Poetry Society of Indiana, The Polk Street Review, and NICE (Noblesville Interdisciplinary Creativity Expo).